Guantanamo: Obama has questions, no answers

Asked by a Bay Area lawyer to stop the force-feeding of a prisoner at Guantanamo, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said federal law left her with no authority to intervene.

But she knew who had the authority — President Obama, who was not only a defendant in the lawsuit, but also, from his own statements, an opponent of forcibly inserting feeding tubes into inmates during a hunger strike.

The suit was filed by Jihad Dhiab, a Syrian who has been held at the naval base in Cuba for 11 years, is not charged with any crime and was cleared by U.S. authorities for release in 2009. He is one of more than 100 prisoners who are on hunger strikes to protest their treatment and indefinite detention, and one of about 35 who are being force-fed, with tubes inserted into their nasal passages while they are under restraint.

In a ruling Monday in Washington, D.C., Kessler said her own hands were tied by a federal law depriving courts of authority over the treatment or conditions of confinement of foreign prisoners who are being held as “enemy combatants.’

She went on to cite a “consensus” of authorities that force-feeding of prisoners violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which prohibits “torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.” And she proceeded to quote Obama, who commented on force-feeding hunger-strikers in a May 23 speech.

“Is that who we are?” the president asked. “Is that the America we want to leave to our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.”

The answers, Kessler said, are up to Obama, who, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, “has the authority — and power — to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.”

Obama hasn’t responded to the ruling. Oakland attorney Jon Eisenberg, who represents Dhiab, said Friday he’s asked Kessler to reconsider the scope of her court’s authority, based in part on a ruling Thursday by another judge who barred officers at Guantanamo from conducting genital searches of prisoners who are about to meet with their lawyers. But Eisenberg said it’s also time to hear something new from the president.

“He has an opportunity to actually do something to back up his woreds,” Eisenberg said. Referring to Obama’s rhetorical question about “who we are,” the attorney said, “So far, it appears that’s who he is.”